Present-day Memory

In October 2007, we conducted twenty personal interviews with elderly inhabitants of Kazan. We asked our interview partners about their experiences with the antireligious politics and about their daily religious life in the 1950s and 1960s. Our respondents' attitudes toward religion diverged significantly: Some had already consciously practiced their faith - be it Islam or Orthodoxy - in the Soviet times, others are former atheists who only after the perestroika years became religious, while still others are indifferent to religion or maintained their atheist worldview after the end of the Soviet Union. Thus, the project covers a wide range of possible patterns of perception and interpretation.
Kazan's youth is also being heard: We talked to about twenty young Muslims or Christians, who are presently studying in madrasahs (Muslim religious colleges) or Sunday schools in Kazan'. They told us about their own religious life, about how the two major religious groups live side by side in Kazan' and shared their view of the own religious community's past with us.